Page loading times in firebug and google analytics

Question

I understand that average page load speeds recorder by google analytics will differ from speeds recorded on my machine with firebug, that's pretty obvious. It's an average of page loads on different machines, browsers and broadband speeds

However, how come google report would show that homepage takes longer to load than product page where in firebug is the opposite?

What's your thoughts on monitoring web sites speeds in general using one of those (or both) tools?

Answer 1

You need to ignore the average in Google Analytics and look at the histograms in Content > Site Speed > Page Timings > Performance Tab

Then explore how and why the timing varies